
Book ■ U 4- 

COFSRIGHT DEPOSm 



LESBIA 

AND OTHER POEMS 



WORKS BY ARTHUR SYMONS 



CITIES (Illustrated) 
CITIES OF ITALY 

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF BROWNING 

(New Edition) 

PLAYS, ACTING AND MUSIC 

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH 
POETRY 

SPIRITUAL ADVENTURES 

STUDIES IN PROSE AND VERSE 

STUDIES IN SEVEN ARTS 

WILLIAM BLAKE 

FIGURES OF SEVERAL CENTURIES 

COLOUR STUDIES IN PARIS (Illustrated) 

THE SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE 
(Revised and Enlarged Edition) 

STUDIES IN THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 



E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 



L E S B I A 

AND OTHER POEMS 



BY 

ARTHUR SYMONS 

AUTHOK OF "studies IN SEVEN ARTS," "COLOUR 
STUDIES IN PARIS," ETC. 




NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 



Copyright, 1920, 
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



AU Rights Reserved 



Printed in the United States of America 



©CI.A570965 
^^'2 -6 mu 



CONTENTS 



I. LESBIA 

PAGB 

The Vampire 1 

The Rings 2 

Her Name 3 

Vain Prayer . , 5 

VuE Du Lac 6 

Accomplishment 7 

Vanitas 8 

Aria 9 

Colloquies: 

i. Pride 10 

ii. The Waiting Face 11 

In Suffering 12 

Dreams 13 

Rome 14 

Dreams in Rome 15 

Magic . 16 

By the Fountain 17 

On Life and Love 18 

The Storm 19 

The Heart 20 

Sonnet 21 

Lamia 22 

The Gift 23 

V 



VI CONTENTS 

II. INTERMEZZO 

FAOB 

Nmi Pattb-en-l'air 27 

Prologxte: before the Theatre 29 

At a Music Hall 31 

Love and Art 32 

New Year's Eve 34 

Stella Maligna 36 

CoRRUPTio Optimi Pessima ....... 41 

The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins ... 42 

Helen and Faustus 51 

Helen 59 

A Song for Helen 61 

Song 62 

III. BIRDS IN THE NIGHT 

Music 65 

The Gypsy's Song 66 

A Drinking Song 68 

Song for Iseult 69 

The Curlew 70 

Old Bones 71 

The Agate 73 

In the Woods 74 

Dust 75 

Song 76 

The Adder 77 

Salome 79 

The Flames op Hell 81 

Epithalamium 84 

Pierrot 85 



CONTENTS VU 

FAOB 

Dante in Hell 87 

Sonnet 88 

Sonnet 89 

Deirdrb 90 

The Hotjr 91 

The Old Gypsy 92 

The Jew 94 

Night at Hampstead 95 

To A Grey Dress 96 

The Floods and the Ashes 97 

Cleopatra 98 

Banishment 99 

In Regent's Park 100 

To the Dead 102 

Happiness 103 

A Song Against Sorrow 104 

The Owl 105 

The Song op the Poppies 106 

Song 108 

Song op the Fire 109 

The Rose and the Rain 110 

A Vision op Kings Ill 

The Cross 112 

IV. SILHOUETTES 

A Death in the Forest 115 

In the Cathedral op Barcelona 117 

Barcelona 118 

Pantorbo 119 

Madrid 120 

In the Prado 121 



Vlll CONTENTS 

PAOB 

At Bordbatjx 122 

Night at Arles 123 

Rome 124 

In the Campagna 125 

At the Three Fountains ....... 126 

Vestigia: 

i. Roman Medallion ....... 127 

ii. Roman Medallion 128 

Hymn to God 129 

Hymn to the Sea 131 

Hymn to Air 134 

Hymn to Beauty 137 

The Human Face 140 

Notte Veneziano 141 



I LESBIA 

(To Lesbia.) 



THE YAMPIEE 

Intolerable woman, where's the name 
For your insane complexity of shame? 
Vampire ! white bloodless creature of the night, 
Whose lust of blood has blanched her chill veins 

white, 
Veins fed with moonlight over dead men's tombs; 
Whose eyes remember many martyrdoms. 
So that their depths, whose depth cannot be found. 
Are shadowed pools in which a soul lies drowned; 
Who would fain have pity, but she may not rest 
Till she have sucked a man's heart from his breast, 
And drained his life-blood from him, vein by vein, 
And seen his eyes grow brighter for the pain, 
And his lips sigh her name with his last breath. 
As the man swoons ecstatically on death. 



THE RINGS 

I know you by the voices of your rings : 
Unhappy and inevitable things 
Cry to me in their shining silence; each 
Has its own fatal and particular speech. 
There is a ring with rubies that I hate: 
You wear it often, and it lies in wait 
Like an assassin, shooting fire at me 
When your pale finger seeks it lingeringly. 
Two rings I watch for, hoping, half in dread, 
To see the one ; but if I see instead. 
Worn on the third left finger, and alone, 
A certain old poor ring with a blue stone, 
I pity first myself, as lovers do. 
Then I forget all else, and pity you. 



HEE NAME 

still the same 

Subtle and melancholy flame. 

That winds about the soul, and spires 

About the body of desires. 

And is both life and death at heart ! 

Love comes and goes, the years depart, 

But we abide; we on our ways 

Conduct the visionary days 

That seem to lead us; and we seem 

As dreamers moving through a dream. 

Who know the path we are to tread. 

1 loved you once, and we have said. 

Each to the other, words that bind 

Soul unto soul, mind unto mind. 

Because they are not said in speech. 

Afterward there remained to each 

That other word, said best in tears ; 

Then shadowy and silent years; 

And now I hear your name again. 

And all the years have been in vain. 

Have we not waited for this hour 

As slaves await their day of power? 
3 



4 LE8BIA 

We have both triumphed; I behold 

Your brightening path that shines with gold 

From where I meditate in peace. 

What is it, then, in this release. 

That sets us free to set us thus 

Where all we have is nought to us. 

Seen now with one another's eyes? 

We have been wise, and yet too wise, 

Too wise, and yet not wise enough. 

And this is the revenge of love; 

Chequered and led in chains, he feels 

His Kingship, at our chariot- wheels ; 

He knows us, conquerors though we be. 

Still slaves, and in his slavery. 



VAIN PRAYER 

I have prayed once, as tired men pray for sleep. 

That I might close the wakeful lids that keep 

The watch of Memory, watching on a grave. 

I have prayed once for this, only to have 

Not joy, nor love, only oblivion; 

For love, that was the joy of life is gone. 

And, going, has left a shadow in its place, 

Which is the shadow of joy's averted face. 

I have prayed once, and yet, for all my pain, 

I have rejoiced that I have prayed in vain. 

It is incredible that such desires 

Should die so meanly. God has not lit his fires 

To be puffed out by any dusty breath. 

That never lived which can accept of death. 



VUE DU LAC 

Once, in this tempest of my life, 

I have been folded from the strife 

Of winds that war upon my ways. 

In the warm quiet of these bays. 

Once I have heard, with you far hence, 

The abiding sea's indifference 

Murmur continually on. 

Being content to be alone. 

And I have once endured the peace 

Of an endurable release. 

Where tranquil hours have wrought for me 

A respite from your memory. 

Once and once only; you demand 

My heart, too Joyful at your hand 

(Since from calm ways you call it home) 

To suffer the old martyrdom. 



ACCOMPLISHMENT 

Why is it, since I made you thus, 
I have no peace in that I made ? 

Since our desire has come to us 
Why is it I am half afraid 
To look on this that I have made? 

I laughed to flight Love's innocence, 
I bade a wiser love be ours, 

Subtler in secret, to the sense, 
I spoiled of all but poisonous flowers 
The perfumed garden that was ours. 

And now the poison-heavy breeze 
Searches the corners of my brain. 

And airs of unavailing peace 
Mock me in memory, and in vain 
Innocent odours haunt my brain. 

I would that you and I could be 

Once more what you and I have been; 

Give back your innocence to me. 
And banish all that went between. 
All you have been, all I have been ! 



VANITAS 

I met you at the parting of the ways, 

And I have lingered with you certain days. 

Over a little grave I had set a stone : 
I had buried love, and I was all alone. 

The roadway of the unforgotten past 
Ended; the road in front lay vague and vast. 

I met you at the parting of the ways. 
And I have lingered with you certain days. 

Because you took my hand in both your hands, 
I think there may be help in other lands. 

Because you laid your face against my face, 
I wonder if hope lives in any place. 

Because you laid my head upon your breast, 
I know the earth holds yet a little rest. 



AEIA 

There's a tune turns, turns in my head. 
And I hear it beat to the sound of my feet 
For that was the tune we used to walk to 
In the days that are over and dead. 

Another tune turns under and over. 

And it turns my brain as I think again 

Of the days that are dead, and the ways she 

walks now. 
To the self-same tune, with her lover. 



COLLOQUIES : L PEIDE 

you may still be proud, my Soul replied 

To the disconsolate questioning 

Of eyes dejected from some hoped-for thing: 
You cannot live, poor fool, without your pride. 
A woman passed you in the street to-day. 

She was the fairest woman in the street, 

I watched your eyes and her eyes meet, 
And in her eyes she carried you away. 



10 



11. THE WAITING FACE 

I said to my friend's friend: Why do his eyes 
Seem to be waiting for a thing we see not? 
Why do they look before as if they waited ? 
And he replied to me : His soul is waiting : 
It waits for Life that has gone by for ever, 
It waits for Life to turn upon her pathway. 

I said to my friend's friend : Why do his eyes 
Seem to be listening to a thing we hear not? 
Why do they look aside as if they listened? 
And he replied to me : His soul is listening : 
It listens to the steps of Death behind him. 
The feet of Death that turn not from his pathway. 



11 



IN SUFFERING 

Lightly I wrote of leaden-footed hours, 
But never knew how heavier far than lead 
Is the unhurrying and unceasing tread 

When sleepless suffering longs for dawn, yet 
cowers 

Into a terrified and huddled thing. 

As, listening to the passing of those feet, 

It waits and hates the dawn that can but greet 

With its own face the face of suffering. 

But now, alas ! but now at last I know 
How long a day is and how long a night 
When measured out in minutes, one by one ; 

And half forget how short a while ago 
I dared await, without a wild affright, 
Eeluctant dark and the delaying sun. 



12 



DEEAMS 

Tired out with grieving over love. 
Love once so kind, so cruel grown, 

I wake into an alien day 
Of mere oblivion. 

The white dawn gathers, aching white: 

Surely I had ill dreams last night? 

For, lying drowsily awake, 

Desiring only to forget, 
Remembered joys return in grief. 

Kisses remembered yet. 
Her lips on mine, her lips now mine 
No more, or now no more divine. 

Breathed on and dimmed, that face still haunts 

The mirror of my memory; 
Her face — but ah, it is these tears 

That hide her face from me- 
Oh Memory, from my heart removt 
Even the memory of love ! 



13 



ROME 

I set all Rome between us : with what joy I set 

The wonder of the world against my world's de- 
light. 

Rome, that hast conquered worlds, with intellec- 
tual might 

Capture my heart, and teach my memory to for- 
get! 



14 



DEEAMS IN ROME 

To dream oi love, and, waking, to remember you : 
As though, being dead, one dreamed of heaven, 

and woke in hell. 
At night my lovely dreams forget the old farewell : 
Ah ! wake not, by his side, lest you remember too ! 



15 



MAGIC 

If I go to the ends of the Earth, shall I find her 

there, 
The woman I loved and who loved me and left me 

alone ? 
If I go to the hell of men's hatred, shall I find her 

hair 
Scented as Satan's, who jibes at God on His 

throne ? 

If I find my way across the passionate Sea, 
And sail in a sailing ship that the sea-wave clips, 
Shall I hear her laugh as the winds laugh, laugh- 
ing at me? 
Never on Earth nor in Hell shall her lips touch 
my lips. 



16 



BY THE FOUNTAIN" 

I remember so well when we crept down the stair 
From the room we had loved in, made bright 
With the light in the room and the night in her 

hair 
Into the heart of the night. 

The light of the night was not utterly gone 
Nor the light that shone on the stair : 
With no moon in the sky, by the Fountain alone 
With the heart of the night in her hair. 



17 



ON LIFE AND LOVE 

Now until all the world is over 

There's but one Love and there's but one Lover, 

Or two at most, that I can discover. 

For as no love can be counted nor told 

In letters of gold — gold can miscarry 

There's no use at all for such lovers to marry. 
So is it now, so was it of old. 

Now the face of a woman to a man is fairer 

Fairer than hell or than heaven above 

To a soul that's all afire with love, 

And cares not to think if Satan snare her. 

If heaven's above and hell is under 

The earth we tread on, while the light lingers, 

We two shall never be rent asunder. 

See, I hold her hand in my fingers 

You, that have seen her not, know not her wonder. 



18 



THE STOEM 

You will not come out of the Storm? 
The door is opened wide. 
The wind howls wildly, inside all is warm. 
I cannot step outside. 

I know you would not come to me if I died. 

You whose body is warm. 

For you no more shall the door be opened 

wide. 
For you the wind and storm. 



19 



THE HEAET 

Why are you next to my heart? 
You were once you, I was I. 
Then did you make me start, 
Then, when you used to lie? 

Gone you are and your truth, 
And a mere thing makes me start. 
Why did you give me your youth 
When you were next to my heart? 



201 



SONNET 

Since all's not over, and the stars depart, 
And you are here who go from me to-night, 
Shall either of us ask the other's heart 
Why love was ours, and why I used to write 
Songs of our passion that you always kept 
Out of your mother's sight, not out of yours, 
That when you woke at nights or when you 

slept 
Were part of you, and seeing what one en- 
dures 
Has been so and so must be till we pass 
What's called the Exit upon every Stage, 
As you when your dance was over: will the 

glass 
Of Memory, that has shown in every Age 
Faces of lovers loving, leave no trace 
Of ours, that on the Stage met face to face? 



21 



LAMIA 

She is the very Lamia of my soul. 

Does she not bite subtly? Yea, she leaves one 

whole 
Eed spot, here in my side, where most I feel 
The snake untrodden by the woman's heel. 
And she as Lamia veritably trod, 
With snake's feet and snake's wings, the ground 

when God 
Planted the Tree of Evil and of Good. 
Is she not in the blood that feeds my blood? 
Where did she bite most cruelly? Near the heart. 
O Lamia, Lamia, will you never depart? 



22 



THE GIFT 

You, most uiilikely of all things, 

To have met after all my wanderings. 

What gift was given me, what gift of grace. 

To have seen again your passionate face, 

Nor nights nor days have bereft me of. 

To have seen those eyes where some tragical love 

Flown from Eternity found its nest? 

Gone all the ardours that heaved your breast 

When you lay in my arms and I kissed you close 

And your mouth on my mouth was the mystical 

rose? 
Lesbia you were, Lesbia you are not. Come, 
Ashes of love, and find for yourselves a home. 



23 



II INTERMEZZO 

(To THE Memory op Charles Baudelaire) 



NINI PATTE-EN-L'AIR 

(Casino de Paris) 

The gold Casino's Spring parterre 
Flowers with the Spring, this golden week; 
Glady, Toloche, Valtesse, are there; 
But all eyes turn as one to seek 
The drawers of Nini Patte-en-1'air. 

Surprising, sunset-coloured lace, 
In billowy clouds of gold and red, 
They whirl and flash before one's face; 
The little heel above her head 
Points an ironical grimace. 

And mark the experimental eyes. 
The naughty eloquence of feet. 
The appeal of subtly quivering thighs. 
The insinuations indiscreet 
Of pirouetting draperies. 

What exquisite indecency. 

Select, supreme, severe, an art! 

The art of knowing how to be 
27 



28 INTERMEZZO 



Part lewd, aesthetical in part. 
And fin de siecle essentially. 

The Maenad of the Decadence, 
Collectedly extravagant. 
Her learned fury wakes the sense 
That, fainting, needs for excitant 
This science of concupiscence. 



PEOLOGUE: BEFORE THE THEATRE 

The play, who should praise? Praise rather the 

actors who play! 

Would you not say, as you watch, that we lived 

our parts. 

You who sit and watch our playing to-day. 

We of each other, and almost our hearts to our 

hearts. 

And almost, I fancy, the Author himself as well? 

He gave us our words in his story, but could he 

have dreamed 

We should take for our own the story he set us to 

tell. 

And be, for our moment, the thing that we need 

but have seemed? 

I swear to you, first-born and last of my heart's 

one love. 

That I love you not; you who love me believe 

me; and you 

Sob in my ears that you cannot hate me enough, 

And I go on my way, and I say to my heart : It 

is true! 

29 



30 INTERMEZZO 



And to you, friend, who are tender and loving 
and wise. 
And a friend out of all to be loved, but by other 
men, 
I swear that I love you, calling my soul to my 
eyes, 
And alas! my friend, you always believe me 
then. 
How well we play our parts ! Do you ever guess, 
You as you sit on the footlights' fortunate side, 
That we, we haply falter with weariness. 

And haply the cheeks are pale that the blush- 
paints hide. 
And haply we crave to be gone from out of your 
sight. 
And to say to the Author: our master and 
friend. 
Dear Author, let us off for a night, one night ! 
Then we will come back, and play our parts 
to the end! 



AT A MUSIC-HALL 

The loud, oppressive orchestra. 
Panting its sultry music out. 
Is as the voice of heat without, 

And, throbbing hotly, pulses "Ah, 
The wind upon the woods without!" 

The glittering ballet curves and winds 
Bewildering broideries of heat; 
I feel the weariness of feet. 

And how the footlights' mirror blinds 
The aching eyeballs soaked with heat. 

Here in the stalls I sit and sigh 

For the renewal of the sea; 

I hear the cool waves calling me, 
Where wave to cool wave makes reply 

On the Mediterranean sea. 



31 



LOVE AND AET 

The sun went indistinguishably down 

Over the murky town, 
Night droops about the houses heavily; 

The Temple gateways gape and frown, 
But, as I enter, strangely, comes to me 
The odour of patchouli. 



Ah, there she flits before me, whose gay scent 

Betrays the way she went; 
A corner intercepts her, she is gone; 

And as I follow, indolent. 
My visiting mind, with her to muse upon, 
Kuns curiously on. 



I seem to hear her mount the narrow stair. 

Creaking, for all her care; 
And now a door flies open, just above, 

And now she laughs, to see him there, 

His arms about her, and both babble of 

The lonsense-verse of love. 
32 



LOVE AND AKT 33 

I enter and forget them, for to-night 

I have my verse to write; 
That love-song, I have yet to pare and trim. 

So should it be? or — God! the light 
In that revealing casement-square grows dim: 
He kisses her, and I but write of him! 



NEW YEAR'S EVE 

I strolled in the midnight homeward along the 
Strand, 
And I heard the bells ring out for the new-born 
year. 
And the tavern's light and the church's on either 
hand, 
Shone, and the sound of a voice was in my ear. 

Feeble, vibrating, faint as the voice of night. 

Out of the darkness came the caressing voice; 
And the church's light on the left, and the light 
on the right, 
Shone, and the voice on the right said : "Make 
your choice!" 

And I saw in a dream the hours of the years to be. 
Tossed like foam from the billowy bells on high ; 

And I heard their voices, like the sound of the 

sea. 

Call to me out of the future: I heard them 

cry: 

34 



NEW year's eve 35 

"We, the hours of the year that to-night hath born, 

Hold in our hands the gifts of the year to-night : 

Choose, for the choice is yours ere the night be 

morn; 

Choose, for the choice is yours ere the dark be 

light." 

Then I saw that the church loomed up like a wall 
of cloud 
And the tavern window glowed like a ball of 
fire. 
And I heard the caressing voice that spake aloud 
The will of my flesh and the whisper of my 
desire. 



STELLA MALIGNA 

I 
STELLAE FIGUEA 

Her beauty has the serpent's undulant grace. 
The rhythm and flow of softly fluctuant line; 

And in the stealthy contours of her face. 
And in her eyes, the charm is serpentine. 

Her eyes have gleams that shine implacably, 
A glitter cold and sharp as swords; they smile 

Subtly as Vivien by the cloven tree 
On Merlin growing careless of her guile. 

Her face in smiling wakes strange memories. 
Memories of death and old forgotten woe; 

Her eyes are pools where many a drowned hope 
lies. 
They shine above the dead who sleep below. 

The very charm of death is in her look, 

The fascination of all delicate deaths 

Of mortals who in easeful ways forsook 

The taking of so many weary breaths. 
36 



STELLA MALIGNA 37 

Her beauty is the mask of spectral nights; 

She smiles, and tells no secret. Lips so red 
Are roses for a garden of delights, 

Surely, and never any garden-bed, 

Flushed with a ruddier fragrance: — ^what of 
dreams ! 

Only shake loose the perfume of thy hair. 
And let me bathe in those delirious streams, 

Stella, and I intoxicate despair! 

II 
LATJS STELLAE 

Thy beauty is a garden planted 
With tropic flowers of poisonous breath. 

Where, in the odorous air enchanted, 

Naught blossoms but the flowers of Death. 

There pale insatiate shadows creep. 

Sated, yet still unsatiated; 
Nor dost thou fear, so calm they sleep. 

The resurrection of the dead. 

Spells of Thessalian sorceresses. 
Philtres in magic moonlights brewed. 

Herbs plucked in ancient wildernesses 
Of noon-tide deepened solitude, 



38 INTERMEZZO 



Pale witchcraft of the earlier world. 
Thy subtle poison mocks, whose cup. 

Sparkling and delicately impearled, 

Once drained, shall drain all reason up. 

They who drink deep of that sweet poison 
Put by the wholesome fruits of earth ; 

They pine where ineffectual foison 
Makes sorer their inveterate dearth. 

Thy tresses are an odorous bower 

Deep-scented as, in seas afar. 
The blue and burning noontide hour 

Wakes on the shores of Malabar. 

Is not thy voice the voice of Lethe? ' 
Is not thy kiss remembered well 

Where over thee and underneath thee 
The vague mists wrap the ways to hell? 

The charm and terror of thine eyes 
Whisper: there may be, even so. 

Airs of remembered Paradise 
On brows of angels now in woe. 



STELLA MALIGNA 39 

in 
STELLAE ANIMA CLAMAT 

She sat before her mirror, and she gazed 
Deep into eyes that gazed at her again. 

Oh, what sad ghosts her mournful memory 

raised 

Ghosts of the days that pass and are in vain. 

She saw her youth, her youth that passed ; she saw 
The lovers for whose hearts she played and won. 

She saw her beauty hold the world in awe, 
Triumphing over all beneath the sun. 

She saw her slain revive, the tombless dead. 
Dead souls that dwell in mortal bodies yet. 

She heard the maledictions that they said 
Before a bar of judgment ever set. 

These were her lovers; she to them had been 
The Bosa mystica — rose passion-pale! 

The poison ^neath the petals slept unseen; 
For she was beautiful, and man is frail. 

These all rose up against her in her past; 

All these she took no thought of; but her pride 
The mirror vanquished: "Youth is fleeting fast. 

And I have never tasted love V she cried. 



40 INTERMEZZO 



"0 God, that I might yet before all goes 

Once more be loved, and once, the last and first, 

Love! I have been, yet never plucked, the rose; 
And I have quenched, yet never felt, that thirst 

"Whereby we put on immortality. 

Is it too late I find it? must the sod 
Press down this body that is all of me. 

And shall not Love survive it, who is God?" 

Thus, counselled of her mirror, will she lay 
Sure snares, as Lilith wove her golden hair; 

And someone coming softly by the way 
Shall suddenly be taken unaware. 

Alas for him ! for it were better much 

That he had never yet begun to be. 
If, when she loved for play, her love was such, 

A^hat, when she loves for love's sake, shall it be ? 



COEEUPTIO OPTIMI PESSTMA 

(On a drawing). 

The smoky locks that twist about that brow 

In anguish of rebellion, are the same 

That bore the laurel, when the mouth's acclaim 

(Wide with unspeakable woes and cursings now) 

Woes heard among the sons of God, whose vow 

Is ever toward the Highest. What strong shame 

Has burnt upon this visage like a flame 

Afire upon a temple, — strong to bow 

The columns of its strength, and blacken all 

The sacred writing on the pictured wall. 

And lay the altar low and ruinous? 

Where, when the fire has had its will, there lies 

Of all once holiest underneath the skies, 

A heap, a ruin, black and hideous. 



41 



THE da:n^ce of the seven deadly 

SINS 

A large and empty room, with a door on the right 
and an open fireplace on the left. On each 
side of the fireplace sit an old Man and 
Woman representing the Body and the Soul; 
The Man holds an hour-glass in his hand. 
The Woman a staff, with which she stirs the 
fire of logs. 

The Soul 

brother Body, we are old. 

What is this numb and trembling cold 

That sets us shaking like thin boughs ? 

Is it not winter in the House? 

Sit closer to the fire and stir 

The logs till they are cheerfuUer, 

And put a warmth into our knees; 

And think no more of memories. 

When we were younger, and could feel 

The blood in use from head to heel. 
42 



DANCE OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS 43 

The Body 

Soul, my sister, is it you 
That now I must give answer to? 
You who of old when I was sick 
Would heal me by some heavenly trick. 
And set before me when I would 

The meat of dreams to be my food? 
Have you forgotten with our youth 
That what we will for truth is truth. 
And that the flames have always been 
A mirror where our eyes have seen 
The dancers of those ecstasies 
That were to our first opening eyes 
Immortal spirits, exultant flames. 
Names with the seven unspoken names? 

The Soul 

1 can call up those dancers. 

The Body 
Call 

The dancers up, and let them all 
Dance the old way, and let them each 
Speak the old way, or some new speech. 
Call up the dancers. 



44 INTERMEZZO 



The Soul 
All is vain. 

We live^ and living is the pain 
"We die of while we live. This earth 
Was made in some celestial mirth 
Not for our pleasure. I who seem 
But to remember in a dream 
Some sleep bewildered thoroughfare, 
Dream not, remember, and despair. 

The Body 

Dream always, and remember not. 
I, if I dreamed, have yet forgot 
Even the sleep. One hour I hold 
An hour-glass sifting sands of gold. 
Call in the dancers, for they give 
Bonds to the moment fugitive. 
Wings to the moment slow to pass; 
Shake out the sands in the hour-glass, 
Sister, Soul, call back to-night 
My dancers, spirits of delight! 

The door opens and the Stage-Manager, in a 
medicBval dress, comes in and goes up to the 
front of the stage and says: 



DANCE OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS 45 

Here, to the Soul's and Body's eyes, 
Out of the flames seven spirits rise; 
Now the first spirit, Lust, begins 
The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins. 

While he is speaking the door again opens and a 
Draped Figure Enters. The Stage- 
Manager retires to the right hand side of 
the stage, and stands watching every move- 
ment. The Draped Figure, after a few steps 
in a slow dance movement, stands behind 
The Body and The Soul, unseen by them, 
looking into the fire as if into a mirror, and 
speaks. He is Lust. Each Sin dances in 
turn. 

The Soul 

Body, is it true that I 

Gave to the Worm the vrings to fly? 

Sloth Enters and SpeaTcs 

The Soul 
Body, this spirit whose slow feet 
Scarce stir the tiniest flame to beat, 
Has surely drunk out of your veins 
This slave's quiescence in its chains; 

1 have no part nor lot therein. 



46 INTERMEZZO 



The Body 
Thereby is Sloth the less a sin. 

Avarice Enters and Speaks 

The Body 

This burdened spirit is of both. 
This busy Kinswoman of Sloth, 
This curb upon our speed, this guest 
Beneath the table at the feast. 
Who, sated, like a dog would hoard 
The bones he snatches from the board. 

Gluttony Enters and Speaks 

The Body 

This sacred spirit of excess 

Speaks wisdom in its wantonness. 

Sister, my Soul, know all fruits 

That grow with earth about their roots. 

And there is nothing more divine 

Than I have tasted in earth's wine; 

Yet, filled and drunken, I have sighe i, 

Unsated and unsatisfied, 

For those far fruits of Paradise, 

The heavenly orchard of your eyes. 

Anger Enters and Speaks 



DANCE OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS 47 

The Soul 

Body, my kind enemy, 

This is the voice that speaks in me 
When, for the love of that delight 
Which is your presence day and night, 

1 pour my anger for your good 
Over you, like a searching flood. 
Body, it is late; the sands 

Sink through the hour-glass in your hands. 

And where the fiery dancers are 

The word's last ashes slowly char, 

And I am cold again. The voice 

Of Anger is a foolish noise, 

A foolish and unfriendly thing, 

Body, not worth remembering. 

Pride Enters and Speahs 

The Soul 
We, too, Body, have been proud; 

The Body 
Yea, as a dead man of his shroud. 

The Soul 
I, even as Pride, have lifted up 
The one intoxicating cup 
Of all the knowledge of the world. 



48 INTERMEZZO 



The Body 

And I, as Pride, have snatched and hurled 
The cup of Knowledge in the dust, 
With hands of force and feet of lust. 

Envy Enters and Speaks 

Envy 

My name is Envy among men. 
I am the eyes of love, and when 
The lover looks upon the eyes 
That casket all his Paradise, 
I am the longing greed of him. 
And my desire makes bright the dim 
Eeflection of all lovely things 
With covetous imaginings, 
And of unlovely things I make 
Things lovely for my longing's sake. 
I am desire of good, desire 
Of beauty, I alone inspire 
Perfecting thirsts that emulate 
Each last draught of the ultimate. 
I know no measure, nothing is 
Unsought by my swift avarice. 
That would unyoke the shining seven 
Pleiades from the shafts of heaven, 



DANCE OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS 49 

Unanchor the moon's crescent boat, 
Eavish the song from the bird's throat, 
And from all mortal sweets distil 
The elixir of the impossible. 
Man knows me not; he calls my name 
Envy, not knowing what I am. 
I speak all tongues; also I speak 
The learning all the ages seek. 
Some capture, and all leave behind; 
I take the earth into my mind. 
Unto my heart I gather love. 
I lust not, nor sloth — heavy move, 
No miser nor no wine-bibber. 
Nor is my tongue hasty to stir. 
Nor my eyes proud; but I am wise 
As the snake's tongue, the woman's eye. 

The Body 

Dancers, I tire of you. I tire 
Of all desire save one desire. 

The Soul 

Dancers, I tire of you. I tire 
Of all desire save one desire: 
That I were free of you. Mine eyes 
Are heavy with your mockeries. 



50 INTERMEZZO 



Dancers, I am more tired than you. 

When shall the dance be danced all through? 

The fire is nearly dead; and one 

By one the last sands fall ; the sun 

Will meet the darkness on its way. 

Body, is it nearly day? 

The Body 
Would it were that last day of days ! 

The Stage-Managek comes forward to the front 
of the Stage and says: 

Does not each morning that decays 
To midnight end the world as well. 
In the world's day, as that farewell 
When, at the ultimate judgment-stroke. 
Heaven too shall vanish in pale smoke? 



HELEN AND FAUSTUS 



The famous Faustus is not dead. 

I tell you that his spirit lied. 

His body burst his coffin-lead 

The third day after he had died. 

So in the Legend it is said, 

Also that Knowledge was his Bride. 

Some say he perished in his pride. 

But I say no. The books he read 

Were part and parcel of his soul 

But he was made to be unwise. 

What weight has wisdom when the skies 

Hid from this learned man the hole 

Into the which he had to stumble? 

The Devils in Hell are never humble. 

II 

The Devil tempted him. He came 

Winged, wordless, into Faustus' room, 

And in his eyes the infernal flame 

Shone, and he lighted up the gloom. 
51 



52 INTERMEZZO 



Now Faustus heard another name 

That was not his. Senses consume 

Themselves as, with her intense perfume. 

The word was Helen. Hot with shame 

The Wizard's visage was drawn in 

As if he saw a certain thing 

And not of his imagining 

That danced in the air, that painted Sin 

After the old inevitable fashion 

When Lilith gave the snake her passion. 

Ill 

Here where I write the Sea-gulls shout 
That have the spirits of the storm 
In their winged bodies, ringed about 
With beauty more than woman's; warm 
In winter when the wolves are out. 
Ood gave them an inhuman face 
No Satan ever can deform. 
To Faustus the eternal Doubt 
Came and the colours of the World 
Were changed and purple turned to blood 
In the magic circle where he stood, 
And then a venomous Serpent curled 
Into no hideous shape but loathing 
All other than his painted clothing. 



HELEN AND FAUSTUS 53 

17 

Now Helen's spirit was a bird 
And she an nntired Wanderer 
To whom all loveless words unheard 
Were subtle to the sense of her; 
She, kissed by Paris, for a word 
That stung like salt. ISTone lovelier 
Drew in her breath, none lovelier 
Drew in her breath, when she was stirred 
By all that world of Sea and Stone 
On her lone island, where the Sea 
Shook her imagination furiously. 
She loved no beauty save her own, 
And, as she walked in that white city, 
iMen said of her: "She has no pity." 



itove was not ever for her enough. 
She felt no throbbing in her heart 
At the mere utterance of Love. 
She nothing had but Beauty. Art 
To her was less than woven stuff 
Her Asian-maids wove; she, apart. 
Waited for visions to depart 
No Asian moons had knowledge of. 
She knew the turning of the Wheel 



54 INTERMEZZO 



Of Destiny might bruise her heel 
As slaves do when they slay a snake. 
Knew she that flames may be fain to steal 
Their own flames and make Troy to reel 
And simply for her's, Helen's, sake? 

VI 

I have forgotten Faustus. He 

Has dropt in fear his magic book 

Because the buzzing of a bee 

Attracts him with its strange rebuke. 

Then suddenly in irony 

His conjuring-wand from out its nook 

Falls. Satan's eyes have changed their look. 

Now, as a wind-blown tapestry 

Shakes and the paintings on it change 

Their aspects, and the very dust 

Stirs on the floor, it seems most strange 

That he, now in the spirit's toil, 

Should have the sense in him to spoil 

The Architecture of his Lust. 

VII 

Suddenly the Arch-Demon spoke. 
"Faustus, I come to you from HeU. 
Some souls are burdened by the yoke 



HELEN AND FAUSTUS 55 

Of chastisement irrevocable. 
There Arctino cries 'Souls to sell!' 
Writhes in imagination to invoke 
Some scandalous and obscene joke. 
He sees gigantic serpents swell 
Bigger than ever; and he, lithe 
Still, loves to see them as they writhe. 
Soon all his merriment is over. 
A woman comes and laughs at him 
Showing seductiveness of limb 
She showed on earth to her last lover. 

VIII 

"I come to bargain for your soul. 

Your Soul, whole-fashioned for your Sin 

Which has not fathomed yet the whole 

Of Evil that is compassed in 

A virgin-martyr's aureole. 

There are many doors that open in 

One Hell to which souls may not win 

Unless they enter, shoal by shoal, 

Past even your imagining 

Of the immensity of your Fall. 

You might as well ask a naked wall 

As ask of me this only thing: 

'When shall I fall in the Pits of Evil?' 

Where there's no God, there's no Devil !" 



56 INTERMEZZO 



IX 

Then something sinister takes place 

All of a sudden. The hour-glass 

Stops dropping silent grains; a race 

Of shadows, mocking shadows pass; 

The ceiling like a drunk ship sways; 

No minute passes as it was; 

The floor heaves up, the floor turns grass; 

And on the spirit of Faustus weighs 

As the eternity of a verse 

The condemnation that shall capture 

The intimate limits of his flesh 

Irrevocably now in Satan's mesh, 

And unimaginably worse 

Than the sinful body's ultimate rapture. 



Down the blown valleys of the Sea 
He shudders and the race begins 
Of waters heaving heavily 
Over his head and something spins 
A devil's web that arrogantly 
Sets water-rats to shake their shins 
And all the flesh that is his skin's 
Is changed immensely. Is this he 



HELEN" AND FAUSTUS 57 

That in his utter anguish craves 
More than the immunity of slaves 
That desire nothing but damnation? 
All's lost. See how a madman raves 
Hurled this and that way by the waves 
Down the long way to Annihilation ! 

XI 

He rises shaken out of sleep 

And sees no spirit there but one 

Whose eyes are fathomless and deep 

As the sea's depths when day has won 

Its way from night. Steep after steep 

Rises, he sees her eyes : nay, none, 

None lovelier ever saw the sun 

Out of the fiery ocean leap. 

Her eyes have known Eternity, 

Her mouth that smiles not is most cruel. 

And all her body is a wonder. 

Hades she haunts, has heard Hell thunder. 

What is more cruel than a jewel 

That flames, laughs, lightens furiously? 

XII 

As from the bowl one spills the wine 
And then one overturns the bowl, 
Helen's long laughing eyes divine 



58 INTERMEZZO 



Shine as the symbol of her soul. 
Now Faustus wavers, mad, malign. 
She turns upon him with the whole 
Of her white purity, love's goal. 
"Faustus, you never shall be mine. 
It is so long since I have been dead 
I know not why I breathe the air 
For in the grave there is no sighing. 
To have slept for centuries in one bed 
God knows I had reason to be fair: 
God knows if there's an end of dying." 

XIII 

The famous Faustus is not dead. 

Now, as for Helen, has she gone 

Back to the eternity of her bed 

That she alone has slept upon? 

The world goes on; over her head 

Men pass and women: she, ever alone, 

Lies, lonelier than any stone. 

I would that all the words she said 

Were written; these, alas, are lost. 

Her, not the uncounted years destroy 

If she were angry as a ghost. 

What would the wind say and the frost. 

For she the gate of Death has crossed, 

Of all that remains of Helen and Troy? 



HELEN 

That heavenly Helen, whose hot lips 

The felon's heart of Paris close, 

A city's hell, a hell of seven ships. 

Hell of men's hearts, in her alcove 

Sees shapes of saffron, shapes of mauve, 

Move, wave, until the inevitable 

Stings of desire as serpents' stings 

Give her the after-taste of hell. 

See how the soul within her springs 

From the woven robe that to her clings. 

About a body made too fair 

For any woman to endure: 

That beauty and that heavy hair. 

Those eyes that many passions lure, 

That flesh so pure to the impure. 

The impure that mock her in the streets 

And follow her to the market-place. 

Helen of the sensual heats 

The blood gives when the sun's disgrace 

Sheds all his heat, now over Thrace, 

Now over Argos, will you not, 

Now that the dark falls and the gloom 
59 



60 INTERMEZZO 



Of night begins, begin to plot 
With me in your close-scented room 
More than the odour of your perfume 
Can give to any man but one, 
One, your last lover? See the fire 
Of sunset's over and the sun 
Descends: the moon has her desire. 
This hour our Destiny has spun 
A web that might unweave the sun. 



A SONG FOE HELEN" 

how her tide did burn 
Against the sun's heat, 
Now in a little urn, 
Hushed her heart's beat, 
Helen's most piteous dust 
Must come to nought! 
Nothing but love and lust 
Left, and our thought. 



61 



SONG 

A song for Helen who shall sing 
That adores Helen as his breath 
And holds the world a trivial thing 
Beside the majesty of Death? 

Her beauty wrought the world no wrong, 
Men's souls she fastened in her snare: 
Who now shall sing an idle song 
Into the void imperishable air? 



62 



Ill BIRDS IN THE NIGHT 

(To Iris) 



MUSIC 

Music for joy : 

Joy waits on sadness to be sweet; 
Music is sad, 

And waits on gladness to complete 
The unimaginable joy where joy and sor- 
row meet. 

Music for love. 

When love lies dreaming of delight; 
Music when love 

Shines upward on an angel's flight; 
And for all happy lovers music, music day 
and night. 

Bid music cease. 

When love is said, when love would weep ; 
Music is sad, 

For her exultant voices keep 
Endless desire, infinite sorrow, but not 
hope nor sleep. 



65 



THE GYPSY'S SONG 

The Gypsy said : I'm here to thrive, 

The earth he is my bed, 
But as for coming here to wive. 

The Devil strike me dead! 

I've had enough of Concubines, 

To last for ever so long; 
There's always taverns for drinking 
wines — 

Let's end the night with a song. 

We loves to jiv along the roads. 

We and our Caravans, 
And when we comes on hopping toads 

Chais lift their hands like fans. 

We always loves to light a fire 
Near by the gorse and sedge; 

It smokes and then it rises higher: 
Liz leans against the hedge. 

We always loves of the air its scent 

And all the winds that pass, 
66 



THE gypsy's song 67 

And then we fix with thorns our Tent — 
Smoke scars the greenest grass. 

Now if I wishes for anything 

In hell or up above 
The blood^s on fire for wandering 

And the heart in me bums for love. 



A DEINKING SONG 

I give you my lips to drink, 

I give you in truth 

Less than you choose to think 

In your wild youth 

Of how wine is lifted up. 

One's song is sung, 

And that your mouth's the cup 

And that you're young. 



08 



SONG FOE ISEULT 

The Heart cries for light 
And the soul for Desire 
In the midst of the Night 
In the heart of the Fire. 
They cry for all things 
That are and that were. 
Desire alone brings 
All the night in her hair 
To me as I sit 
And gaze on the fire. 
Finite and infinite 
Are the Gods of the Fire! 



THE CUELEW 

Thrice have I heard the Curlew cry. 

Thrice, as the ominous bird of night 

And as the sea-foam was scattered high 

And the naked dancers in the sky 

Had given over dancing, and an evil eye 

Shone like hell's fire, and the angel of light 

Had folded his wings, not as the wings 

Of the wind-blown sea-gulls that laugh as they fly 

And hide in their hidden hearts such things 

As they alone know of, I was aware 

Of a sudden heat and a change in the air 

And the opening somewhere of a door 

That opened on nothing, but out of it shone — 

Transverse on the sea-waves' shifting floor — 

A light more strange than when night is come 

And the new dawn burns. Lo and it turns, 

Turns on itself, and the sea's floor burns. 

And the very space before me is thinned. 

And the thing that looms there, is it not I? 

Thrice have I heard the Curlew cry 

And thrice I have cried with the voice of the 

wind. 

70 



OLD BONES 

He'll never make old bones, 

At least I think not; 

He'll sit on the ancient stones, 

At least he shall drink not 

Of wounds that are worse than moans; 

But if he shall sink not 

Under a woman's burden he'll live on 

Under a toad-like stone, 

And, as far as he can prove it. 

Shall try to love it. 

Being more utterly inhuman 

Than any woman 

God ever made out of clay. 

The stone's image shall vanish away 

And the woman at his side 

Shall be one of the images 

Made by the evil ones 

Out of the ruins of moons and suns, 

Not out of the whirling tide 

Of the imaginary seas ; 

She shall be no man's bride. 

None shall bend at her knees. 
71 



72 BIRDS IN THE NIGHT 

And, before the world turns over 

And tries to sleep. 

This love-drunken man shall be her lover, 

Blood between them shall leap — 

Blood shall cry out for blood, 

And down from the mountains steep 

There shall be blood on the flood, 

Men's blood under the stones; 

And, as long as the world shall sleep, 

He'll never make old bones. 



THE AGATE 

I cut an agate for a stone 
And this I put into a cleft 
And I was with the wind alone 
And nothing else of me was left, 
But what in cutting it I had lost. 
Now had one lost the wind and rain 
One had no reason, even a ghost 
Has much more reasoning than men. 
And still I wander on alone 
And there's a something in my mind. 
Of having cut an agate-stone 
That jogs at me from far behind 
And makes me more uneasy than one 
Who having not counted up the time 
Knows that the deed he has not done 
Counts for an agate in his crime. 



73 



IN THE WOODS 

I have made a beautiful fire : 

I am in haste to be gone. 

The winds and the woods had the sound of a 

lyre. 
And my feet were tangled by many a briar, 
And the sun went out and the moon mounted 

higher. 
And the tall thick grasses I trod upon 
Were soft and sweet to my rapid feet, 
And the man I walked with was one 
Who loved nature much more than I did. 
For myself, being proud, whatever my pride 

did. 
That I forgot in the simple pleasure 
Of being very much at my leisure; 
So that, in the very heart of the wood 
A bird's voice sang to my blood. 



74 



DUST 

There is a demon in the mind 
And an evil wind that blows behind 
The dust of the world in one heap to bind. 

He follows ns as the moon the sun — 

He says, "What have I done? I have done 

The deed that I dare not think upon." 

We fly from him to the arms of sleep, 
And sleep refuses sleep. We steep 
Our senses in the dust that's a-heap. 



75 



SONG 

When there's a noise among the dead 

That perished in the night 

Enough to waken in their bed 

Slim girls with heels that smite 

A man's bare flesh, heels with their heels, 

And bodies side by side, 

It's awful to think what a dead man feels 

With Death for his only bride. 



76 



THE ADDEE 

If anything on earth be found 

To root our feet upon the ground 

It must be one 

Thing and one single thing alone : 

A glass of wine 

That makes the sun much less divine 

And makes the subtle moon to wain 

And casts the slayer from the skin. 

After the solace of our verse 

The next thing is the Art to curse 

Someone we hate. 

"0 Adder at my garden gate 

That have your passions night by night. 

Please me and bite 

Before the sun has fallen low 

Mine enemy and not your foe." 

At which mine Adder ceased to glide 
And glared at me in sullen pride 
And lifted up 

His head that does not care to stoop, 

77 



78 BIEDS IN THE NIGHT 

And said to me: 

"Nay, not thine ancient enemy, 

For he is less than anything 

Less than the least — ^to deserve my sting. 

"The poison that I hide within 

This sinful thing that is my skin. 

From evil sprung. 

Surges into my cloven tongue. 

The Devil made 

Me out of some unholy shade; 

But, as you see I suck this root. 

The Devil has no cloven foot. 

"Once in the Garden of God I trod. 

When Satan was mine only God; 

And, by these stings 

The Devil knows if I had wings. 

There Lilith grew 

Out of a drop of poisoned dew; 

And, by her blood, by which I fell, 

Beware of the Garden-Gate of Hell!" 



SALOME 

When Salome lifting up 
In her painted hands the cup, 
Symbol of her virginhood, 
Her perverse, pure eyes malign 
See, instead of signs of wine. 
Frantic, to her vision, blood. 

One foot twisted in advance 
In the rhythm of the dance 
Beats upon the perfumed floor. 
Now a sound upon her jars 
Like the sound of iron bars. 
Like the clashing of a door. 

The winds tangle round her waist. 
On her lips she feels the taste. 
Taste forbidden to her lips. 
What is this that she drinks in? 
Is it that the House of Sin 
Her imagination grips? 

Morbid ardour in her grows, 

In her cheek no colour glows, 

79 



80 BIRDS IN THE NIGHT 

Heat of anguish in her stirs: 
What is this she sees in space, 
Hanging in mid-air, a face. 
Lifeless, sinister as hers? 

Stung by sterile stings of drouth 
All the hotness of her mouth 
Makes her aching senses thirst 
For that thing that cannot be: 
Hate of her Virginity, 
Seizes on her. She, the Accursed! 

Shaken as the snakes in grass 
Byes her wan Herodias, 
Daughter of a King of Kings. 
Herod, writhing on his throne, 
Feels her fingers to the bone 
Clutching at his jewelled rings. 



THE FLAMES OF HELL 

These women had gold hair about their brows 
While they were living: now the worm feels that, 
Feeding upon their flesh. They shall rise up, 
Not till that day, when God shall call for them; 
But they shall rise. women that have sinned, 
Shall God have pity? God shall not have pity. 
There is much gold hair that the flames of hell 
Shall take fast hold on. Bodies are not white 
For heaven, where the blood shall wash them 

clean : 
These women's bodies are too white; sweet scents 
Burn fiercely; there's a fragrant pile for hell. 
mystery of beauty, and this flesh 
God hath no part in ! yet so beautiful. 
Man born of woman, born under the law, 
Conceived in sin, sins most of all in this. 
And takes damnation on him with a kiss. 
And these lips rotted into dust ! Graves hide 
The end of women's beauty; a kind friend. 
Close and discreet; but we'll not think of that. 
Paris would loathe his Helen could he see her, 

But Paris too is dust. I'm breathing yet, 

81 



82 BIRDS IN THE NIGHT 

Although I haunt the tombs ; and are there not 
Women, with golden hair about their brO.ws, 
This side the mould ? and they are calling me. 
They smile, their eyes are as a light, I run, 
I would embrace them, and drink down at once 
Death, and the second Death. I am sick. 
Sick toward the ending, and mine eyes draw in 
Distempered visions. But this kills me. Come, 
Women my flesh and spirit tremble for ; 
Delay no longer, delay not, see, 
I call to you, I stretch my hands, come, come, 
I can not do without you — ^It is vain 
This violence of passion leaves me faint. 
Dead women, be my brides once more. Not Death 
Shall be more amorous of you; not the clods 
Clip you with closer arms. Mine, mine, all mine. 
And there is all this beauty underground, 
And there their worm dieth not, nor is the flame 
Quenched, but these fair women that have sinned 
Shall have their portion in the burning lake. 
And so live beautiful for ever. God, 
Have this much pity, let men look across 
The great gulf hewn of nether air, that holds 
A void of footless darkness, let them see 
Pale, with their branch of barren palm, their robes 
Glimmering in the brighter light than day. 



THE FLAMES OP HELL 83 

Those saints, their rivals : grant them this, God ! 
They, beautiful for ever, shall rejoice 
Even in the flames of hell, despising still 
Those women who are haggard even in heaven ! 



EPITHALAMIUM 

Sister, the bride-bed waits; sister for thee; 
The bride-bed waits for thee and me. 
Sisterly hours together, hand in hand. 
Beat out an epithalamy : 
Love and the night, come softly, hand in hand I 

Love and the night, come swiftly, hand in hand. 

That we may reach the longed for land, 

night of love, before the dark be dead. 

Or the pale morning understand 

Why the moon faints and why the stars lie dead. 

Sister, the moon shalL faint, the stars lie dead, 

Sister, above our marriage-bed. 

The fruitless stars, the chaste and sterile moon, 

While we, in maiden nuptial wed. 

Taunt with her single maidenhood the moon. 

Sister, sister maiden, maiden moon. 
The joy, the aching joy to swoon 
Into thine arms, into thine arms to die ! 
Sweet bride, thy maiden bridegroom, soon 
Into the rapture of thine arms to die! 

84 



PIEEEOT 

I that am Pierrot, pray you pity me ! 

To be so young, so old in misery : 

See me, and how the winter of my grief 

Wastes me, and how I whiten like a leaf. 

And how, like a lost child, lost and afraid, 

I seek the shadow, I that am a shade, 

I that have loved a moonbeam, nor have won 

Any Diana to Endymion. 

Pity me, for I have but loved too well 
The hope of the too fair impossible. 
Ah, it is she, she, Columbine ! again 
I see her, and I woo her, and in vain. 
She lures me with her beckoning finger-tips ; 
How her eyes shine for me, and how lier lips 
Bloom for me, roses, roses, red and rich! 
She v/aves to me the white arms of a witch 
Over the world : I follow, I forget 
All, but she'll love me yet, she'll love me yet! 

No, I shall never, never call you mine. 

Escaping and eternal Columbine. 

Once Watteau knew you, a Marquise; you played 
85 



86 BIEDS IN THE NIGHT 

A pastoral of love in masquerade. 
King Louis turned his head to see you pass, 
Superbly, at Versailles, upon the grass, 
And I, poor Pierrot, turned my head away: 
You did not see the tears I wept that day. 

Later, you woke from sleep when Deburau 
Found me in Paris, fifty years ago. 
I beat my wings against the footlights' glare. 
You were an actress, and I sought you there; 
And I adored you for your rouge, the grace 
Of your fictitious and diviner face; 

But some one bought you. Last, a silhouette. 
You mocked me in the magic of Willette, 
Flittingly fin-de-siecle and feline at 
The hostel guarded by a Sable Cat. 
Columbine of the ages! if to-day 
I find you, in no masquerade array. 
But here, and now: oh! somewhere, surely, here. 
You hide until the moment: nay, appear! 

Nay, but I see you : is it you, divine. 
Or you, perchance diviner. Columbine? 
I will go seek you, moonbeam, once again, 
And if I seek you, must it be in vain? 
Kind friends, I think 'tis she : and if 'tis she, 
I, that am Pierrot, pray you pity me I 



DANTE m HELL 

Wlien Dante Alighieri entered that hollow place 
Hell and saw wild whirls of confused smoke 
Like glaring tapers round a painted face 
And found himself among such evil folk 
God had condemned — for where in heaven a space 
For such as these? — and saw under the yoke 
Of shameful sins, the inevitable disgrace 
The earth endured ere the first woman spoke 
One word to the man she loved not; then his eyes 
Darkened a little, and as Virgil came 
Nearer to him, the whole sense of that impure 
Air and its heat and its intolerable flame 
Tortured his vision, and he felt the obscure 
Desire of an unenviable Paradise. 



87 



SONNET 

Divine Water loved by ^schylus. 
Who, God in Man, created Tragedy 
Out of void Chaos' aching agony. 
And, out of the anguish of Prometheus 
Gave to the Fire-Bringer who rules over us 
More than Zeus gave man, fire-fledged Sorcery 
And a bewitched life over the Caspian Sea, 
Loveless, but adored by the winds perilous 
That toss the sea-waves into hostile storms; 
Seeing in midnights more prodigious forms. 
And in the noon's heats hell's insanities; 
And for his heart, that seat of ancient wrongs, 
The winged Oceanides and their scented 

songs : 
Last, God-created Aristophanes. 



88 



SONNET 

Why is it that you use your fascination 
Of fatal beauty that has power to ensnare 
Even the serpents in their violation 
Of all that's sane in webs of woven hair 
And set them into deeds of vile sedition 
As rebels round a city mutinous 
That fall into the folds of their perdition 
And are for that more subtly poisonous? 
Simply that you are impelled by an obsession 
To do all evil and to do no good. 
As a pure virgin in her first confession 
Lets out the secret of her innocent blood, 
Nor sees in the hidden monk behind the grate 
A conscience-'stricken face consumed witjh 
hate. 



89 



DEIEDBE 

There was much crying in the wind 
Late last night 

As of the crying of a soul that had sinned 
And longed for the light. 

But I have seen to-day 
With John in a cafe a child 
Who seemed so tragic, that play 
Was lost to her, never she smiled. 

Adorable, passionate, 

Loveless, the child in her chair. 

Casting her eyes down, sat— 

The Sun might have envied her hair. 

She had taken my hand, then turned 
Her eyes on me, pure as the sky. 
If ever a man's heart to her yearned, 
Mine did, I know not why. 



90 



THE HOUE 

You miglit put a little life 
Into this sullen hour. 
The world is sick of strife: 
Why all this lust for power ? 

Each minute some man dies; 
Dead men rise never again. 
The cold and cruel skies 
Look down upon the slain. 



91 



THE OLD GYPSY 

She is too old to see again 

The age of threescore years and ten; 

She is as hale as an old tree, 

Straight as its shrivelled stem, and dark 

And full of wrinkles as its bark; 

Children and grandchildren has she, 

Fourteen they are and forty-three, 

And sixty years has she been wed, 

And never slept in any bed 

Under a roof of tile or slate. 

And never will, alive or dead. 

And whether death come soon or late. 

Her hands are heavy with gold rings. 

She has three rings of heavy gold 

On every finger, earrings old 

Of gold, and gold and orange things 

For kerchiefs and head-coverings. 

Her voice is gentle as a bird's. 

And there is savour in her words, 

For she, although with stealth she hoards 

The private speech her people have. 

Knows well the depth of every lav. 
92 



THE OLD GYPSY 93 

Her eyes are secret, and her mouth 
A gentle and grave hypocrite; 
She reads the heart of age and youth. 
Seeing, not understanding it. 
And tells for money half the truth; 
But in her ancient soul there lies. 
Deeper than she can ever look. 
The roots laid open like a book 
Of earth and of our destinies. 



THE JEW 

A poor old man, a crossing-sweeper, stands 
Bent on his broom that sweeps a foot of way; 
A fat, furred Jew with jewels on his hands 
Passes the crossing-sweeper twice a day. 

His eyes are swollen with covetonsness and fat, 
His fingers swell about his jewelled rings; 
Into the old man's stained and battered hat 
A penny, once a month or so, he flings. 

The old man, who is humble, poor, and wise. 
Takes up the penny and says Thank you. Sir; 
And the kind Jew, to purify his eyes. 
Rivets them back upon his rings and fur. 



94 



NIGHT AT HAMPSTEAD 

The damp and sweet breath of the night ! 

Lean out of the window, your cheek on the ivy, 

My cheek on your cheek, my dear and delight ! 

Look up now, the stars overhead ! 

Look yonder, the gas where it trembles reflected. 

Three flames on the glass with its socket of lead. 

See there, where the leaves of the trees. 

Black shadows that droop on the wall and its 

whiteness, 
Weave the dark into lace that flaps loose in the 

breeze. 

See the trees, the great trees by the house. 

The trees where the light is the ghost of the day- 

light. 
And the trees with the night tangled fast in their 

boughs. 

Dream on then, my dear and delight! 

The breath of the world pulses faint in the city. 

Here is the damp and sweet breath of the night. 

95 



TO A GEEY DEESS 

(There's a flutter of grey through the trees: 
Ah, the exquisite curves of her dress as she 

passes 
Fleet with her feet in the path where the grass 

is! 

I see not her face, I but see 
The swift re-appearance, the flitting persis- 
tence ■ 

There! — of that flutter of grey in the distance. 

It has flickered and fluttered away: 

What a teasing regret she has left in my day- 
dream. 
And what dreams of delight are the dreams that 
one may dream ! 

It was only a flutter of grey; 

But the vaguest of raiment impossible chances 
Has set my heart beating the way of old dances. 



96 



THE FLOODS AND THE ASHES 

Love that hath eaten ashes, and hath mingled 
weeping 
Into his drink and bread; 
That hath been in cities fallen, a sentinel keeping 

Watch where a host has fled ; 
Love that hath watched by night when every man 
was sleeping. 
How have men called thee dead? 

The floods have lifted up, Love our Lord, their 
voices, 

The floods lift up their waves; 
Thou that art mightier than many waters' noises 

Shall from the deep sea-graves 
Lift up alive the soul that in thy love rejoices, 

liove that is lord and saves. 



97 



CLEOPATRA 

Your eyes have drunk Eternity : 
They haunt me in oblivious hours, 
And follow me among the flowers; 

Your eyes hold fast the mystery 
Of other memories than ours. 

Within your immemorial eyes 
There sits the cruelty of Time 
In its indifference sublime; 

Empty, and infinitely wise. 

Your eyes out-reach the bounds of Time. 

I gaze into your endless gaze, 

I lose myself as in a sea; 

I love myself, content to be 
A stream that all its nights and days 

Lives but to die into the sea. 



BANISHMENT 

That you should live, be blithe and well. 
When I am dead and in my grave, 

It seems a thing incredible 
If Death be not a lying knave. 

My life began with yours, and now 

In my sad dark oblivion 
I shall not know how long or how 

I am to leave you to go on. 

I shall be somewhere, I suppose. 
For nothing that began can end : 

What is it worth to be a rose 

And not to recognise one's friend? 

What if the love that makes my soul . 

A thing identical with you 
Should lose in some vast selfless whole 

That single self we came into? 

How could I, being that speechless thing, 

Cry out, or in the rose's scent 

Of inmost ardour breathe and bring 

You news out of my banishment? 
99 



IN REGENT'S PARK 

Is it the chilly winter grass 
That seems as green as if to lay 
A carpet for the spring to pass? 
Is it a gladness in the day 
That wakes this joy upon my way? 

Is it that idly I observe 
The misty trees, the water's white? 
For all my body is a nerve 
Strung for the fingers of delight. 
And earth is musical with light. 

Dear, once we wandered in this park, 
Strangers together, side by side. 
At the grey falling of the dark; 
And now, how many leagues divide 
Otir feet, and how the world is wide I 

And yet to-day, though you are far 

And I am lonely, how my soul 

Leaps out to find you where you are, 

Because a word has put the whole 

Of life into a dream's control ! 
100 



IN" regent's park 101 

Love that makes wisdom foolish, makes 
The folly of the lover wise. 
Who out of dreams of beauty wakes 
To see the world with subtler eyes. 
And turns delight to Paradise. 

Blind love, that brings the gift of sight, 

Makes and unmakes the world anew; 

I see all beauty in the light 

Of my imaginings of you: 

All's beauty, since a dream came true! 



TO THE DEAD 

Is there a waking sorrow in the grave? 

Is it not over, all that holds from sleep? 

No more the heavy-footed hours shall creep, 
No more in vain man's longing heart shall crave. 
The long suspense is over; earth that gave 

Calls back the gift — Ah, who should strive to 
keep? 

Dust over dust, a little narrow heap 
Holds all we love — Ah, who should strive to save? 

Peace, peace is yours, dead, and yours alone. 
What peace hath man, unstable man, whosa 

breath 
Serves but in vain to winnow fruitless chaff? 
Yet will he ever seek, who ne'er hath known 
The flying phantom Peace, till lastly Death 
Writes in that word the final Epitaph. 



102 



HAPPINESS 

Happiness, too warm and deep, 

Shuts the eyes of love asleep, 

Love that v?atching for the thief 

Is only kept awake by grief. 

Fear not grief : take grief for a crutch ; 

But fear to be happy overmuch. 

The heart beats like a passing bell : 

All is not well, when all is too well ! 

And the heart that watches, watches less 

When it's well afloat upon happiness. 



108 



A SONG AGAINST SOEROW 

Only there must be no ending! 
If yonr heart's afraid of winter, . 
Where an open door is standing 
Go yonr ways and do not enter. 
If you enter I retain you 
For the soft and stormy weather. 
And we watch the world together 
While you hold me, while I chain you. 

Time's a stream and love is fleeting, 
And to-day is soon to-morrow. 
And the hours grow tired repeating 
Joy but not repeating sorrow. 
What's the message Time is sending? 
'Closes fade and daylight closes. 
Lovers' joys are like the roses"; 
Only, there must be no ending! 



104 



THE OWL 

I heard the hooting of the White Owl, 

Not as far off as the sea, 

And in the sultry passion of the night 

I knew not what came to me ; 

Only the voice of an inhuman thing 

Thrilled in my ears. 

And I stood lonely, listening, 

As if from the eternal yeats 

The Owls had hooted, as if the Owls had 

sinned 
And had eaten some insane root, 
The moon, the night, the mystery of the 

wind, 
Myself, and the White Owl's hoot. 



105 



THE SONG OF THE POPPIES 

It is a great thing to be born, 

A greater thing to live. 

Eed and black poppies, you are torn 

Out of the heart of darkness ; scent 

That I breathe is poisonous. 

For my scent are you meant 

Things forgotten to forgive? 

Leaf with leaf has grandeur and 

I think that you understand 

Why it is you have to live, 

Flame without shame, luxurious. 

Dragging at the roots of us. 

Eudely rooted from the soil. 

For you face me in my room. 

Dazing me with your perfume. 

Not one breath of air to soil 

Your beauty stranger than all things. 

For you are the Kings of Kings 

In the region of the flowers. 

In the halls of Hades you 

Counted the enchanted hours 

For ravished Proserpine his bride, 
108 



THE SONG OF THE POPPIES 107 

Where the black-winged raven flew 

By the sullen Styx's side. 

Earth cries out of her acrid womb, 

As she sees you : Can I forgive 

All that glory of your life, 

I that am neither maid nor wife, 

I that know not night from morn? 

It is a great thing to be born, 

A greater thing to live. 



SONG 

My silks I put away 

Into a scented room 

Where the night-moths can play 

With their own perfume. 

And then away I went 
But left a lovely cloth 
To perfume with its scent 
The perfumed moth. 



108 



SONG OF THE FIEE 

There is a great passion in the Fire 
That glows with glamour and flames 
Into colours more fierce than Fame's 
And the Song of the fire is the song of its 
desire. 

The fire eats the heart of the wood 
Until into ashes it turns 
And the wood burns and the fire burns 
And the fire's blood drinks the wood's 
blood. 



109 



THE ROSE AND THE RAIN 

Her rose fell off in the rain 
And I picked it out of the mud. 
The scene was Madrid in Spain, 
And why did it touch my blood? 

She knew (what nobody knows)' 
What was the reason in Spain 
That I never gave back her rose, 
That she followed me back in the rain. 



110 



A VISION OF KINGS 

Kings have cast down their crowns for this 

One word of the Unattainable. 

The very Slaves of the Abyss 

Are named by this. Hell is not Hell, 

Nor is God only in Heaven alone: 

Silent in Heaven is God's name. 

So, as time's measured by a stone 

And all the stars are mocked by flame 

And the world moves always and the Sun 

Shines and the moon fades out in turn 

And all that we have ever done 

Shall, somehow, as the world might, bum: 

So, all the Fate that falls on Kings 

Shall fail as fails each period. 

And the beginning and the end of things 

Move somewhere out of sight of God. 



Ill 



THE CEOSS 

When Jesus Christ was crucified 
A sudden darkness fell. 
The hearts in the three Maries cried : 
He hath gone down to Hell! 
And then again the darkness broke 
And still the Cross was there. 
Satan behind the Cross like smoke 
Tossed in the wind his hair. 

Over their heads a vulture swung. 
One heard the gallows creak, 
And still nailed on His Cross there hung 
Christ and His eyes did speak. 
Then Satan turned his back in spite. 
His shadow transverse fell. 
Judas Iscariot, hot as night. 
Gaped like the mouth of Hell. 



112 



IV SILHOUETTES 
(To Jose Maria de Elizando) 



A DEATH m THE FOREST 

The wind is loud among the trees to-night, 
It sweeps the heavens where the stars are white 
I know : it is the angel with the sword. 
Ah, not the woman, not the woman. Lord! 

The wind is loud, I hear it in my brain, 
I hear the rushing voices of the rain. 
Hers in the rain, and his that once implored. 
Ah, not the woman, not the woman. Lord ! 

Hands in the trees, hands in the flowing grass, 
They wave to catch my spirit as I pass. 
I have no hope to pass the ghastly ford. 
Ah, not the woman, not the woman. Lord! 

I see her tresses, floating down the wind: 
Her eyes are bright : it is for these I sinned. 
We sinned, and I have had my own reward. 
Ah, not the woman, not the woman, Lord! 

She has a little mouth, a little chin: 

God made her to be beautiful in sin, 

God made her perfectly, to be adored. 

Ah, not the woman, not the woman, Lord ! 
115 



116 SILHOUETTES 



We sinned, but it is I who pay the price: 
I say that she shall dwell in Paradise. 
For me the feast in hell is on the board. 
Ah, not the woman, not the woman, Lord! 



IN THE CATHEDEAL AT BAECELONA 

Out of the sun a sudden shade. 
The shadow of the wings of God, 

As if the Holy Dove had laid 
Dim quiet on the holy sod. 

What cool, what infinite repose! 

Behold the nearer heaven on high, 
And, through the window of the rose, 

Purple and gold and rose, the sky. 



117 



BARCELONA 

The white and brown of fifty masts 
Chequer the depths of blue below, 
Where in the harbour, to and fro. 
The little white sails go. 

A mule mounts slowly up the hill, 
A red-capped peasant, half-asleep, 
Nods on his back; the small black sheep 
In slow procession creep. 

Far as to where the moimtains meet 
The sky that gently silvers down 
The roofs and windows of the town 
Swarm grey and white and brown. 

Filmy and blue the sky above, 
A burning blue the depths below, 
Where in the harbour, to and fro. 
The little white sails go. 



118 



PANTOEBO 

Salvator Eosa piled those rocks, 
Thus wildly, under that wild light, 

Or else fantastic Nature mocks 
His finite with her infinite. 

Grey ruinous heights that rise in towers, 
That fall in gorges down the steep. 

Stark trees that never feel the showers, 
And rocky torrents buried deep. 

Tormented wrathful ghosts of hills 
That bear the scars of ancient woes. 

And chafe beneath the doom that fills 
Their hollows with a loathed repose. 



119 



MADRID 

A beggar smoking a cigar. 
Here at the corner of the street. 
Strums feebly on an old guitar. 

He strums an air half sad, half sweet. 
An air of laughter and of cries. 
Here at the corner of the street. 

The beggar lifts his sightless eyes 
While the pathetic music thrills 
The air with laughter and with cries. 

Rattling the plate that never fills 
A woman reaches piteous hands 
While the pathetic music thrills. 

Wrapt in his cloak the beggar stands. 

Impassive, while the wife implores 

A woman reaching piteous hands. 



120 



IN THE PEADO 

The black mantilla drapes with grace 
The lustrous blackness of her hair, 

And to the pallor of her face 
Gives that bewitching air. 

Her closed fan rests against her cheek 
Just where the dimple might have been ; 

She turns her head, and seems to seek 
Her subjects, proudly, like a queen. 

I see the lady of my dream: 
'Tis she, I am not here in vain. 

Her body's rhythm, and the gleam 
Her eyes are lit with — this is Spain ! 



121 



BOEDEAUX 

The dull persistence of the rain, 
Long melancholy streets, the vain 

Desire, the hopeless wandering; 
Here every woman has a face 
Inexorably commonplace, 

Ennui is over everything. 

Hour after leaden hour goes by, 
I watch the leaden-coloured sky, 

I watch the rain still fall and fall. 

Women and gaiety and flowers 

When they are ours, why, all is ours ! 

Here Ennui is the lord of all. 



122 



NIGHT AT AELES 

Down the deserted street 
A figure black from head to feet, 
Save where a lifted skirt betrays 
A gleam of whiteness, strays. 

The moonlight, softly shed 
Upon her veiled and stately head, 
Lays all its ardour of repose 
About her as she goes. 

No woman queenlier stept. 
Nor goddess, since Diana slept 
Beside her sisters, when the gods 
Perished from their abodes. 



123 



EOMB 

Here, at the summit of this sacred wood, 
I seem to be half-way from Eome to heaven. 
Eternal as the world, I see the seven 

Hills of the world's desire, that have withstood 

The lust of Kings, God's jealous fatherhood. 
The snare of ancient beauty that was given 
Back to the world for the world's woe, and even 

The Barbarian's insolent and destroying brood. 

The clouds wander above me, and beneath 
The vague Campagna wanders desolate; 
I see the roofs, the turrets and the dome. 
And the pale air seems to exhale like breath 
The melancholy and most delicate 
And haughty and remembering soul of Eome. 



124 



IN THE CAMPAGNA 

Love dies not but it sleeps: 
Here, where the peace of Eome, 

Passing all knowledge, keeps 
My heart within its home, 

I have known that repose 

Which only slumber knows. 

Here where my feet are set 

Upon the asphodels, 
I can for once forge 

The world contains aught else 
But these, the grass, the seven 
Hills, and the opal heaven. 

Peace nestles from the sky 
In these soft veils of air; 

Bid love prepare to die. 
Which is mine only care. 

If he his breath still keeps, 

Hush, be content: love sleeps. 



125 



AT THE THEEE FOUNTAINS 

Here, where God lives among the trees, 

Where birds and monks the whole day sing 
His praises in a pleasant ease, 

heart, might we not find a home. 

Here, after all our wandering? 
These gates are closed, even on Kome. 

Sonls of the twilight wander here; 

Here, in the garden of that death 
Which was for love's sake, need we fear 

How sharp with bitter joy might be 

Love's lingering, last, longed-for breath, 
Shut in upon eternity? 



126 



VESTIGIA. I. ROMAN MEDALLION" 

Ah ! if you knew how vain are these delicious 

tears ! 
How little so divine and desultory a thing 
As this hour's love, alas, will seem, remembering 
These tears, this hour, and this hour's love, in 

other years ! 

The chaplet of white fading roses, one by one, 
Petal from petal falling on some pensive day; 
Noontide upon the shining beach, while on the 

bay 
A fisher's boat came slowly drifting with the sun; 

Yes, and the vase of precious porcelain that you 

broke ; 
The day you lost that ring, the day you bought 

this gem: 
You will remember these things, and, ah yes, with 

them 
The day that your heart answered mine before it 

spoke. 



127 



II. EOMAN" MEDALLION 

To Lena in Naples 

Let me not promise to remember you 
Because you have been either fair or kind; 
Are there not many kind fair women who 
Have filled and who have faded from my mind? 

And yet I think that when in days to be 
I think of Naples and these April days, 
Something of you will wander back to me 
Along the undiscoverable ways. 

Ah, what ? That we have seen some Carmen die, 
Or some spectacular burial of the Christ, 
You may remember, if ou will; but I. 

The satin of your ears, your cheeks' fine silk, 
And that your mouth was like a melon sliced, 
And that your neck tasted as fresh as milk. 



128 



HYMN TO GOD 

I 
Father of Energy, 
Pattern of Beauty, uncreated Light, 
Fire of the flaming deep, most awful height 
Of Air, and endless motion of the Sea, 
True centre of the Earth, Imagination's 
Immovable foundations, 
Wings of the Wind, and thought out-reaching 

Thought, 
Health of the spirit, the sole Music wrought 
Out of the spheres' once jangled harmony. 
And, lastly. Love; 

Thou, who dost secretly and sweetly move 
Through all created things. 
Hear while thy mighty creatures cry to thee, 
Veiling their proud eyes with their wings. 

II 

Thy creatures, that have wandered from that line 

Thou sett'st them out of Chaos, that have gone 

About their many businesses, not Thine, 

Saying let my will, not Thy will be done; 
129 



130 SILHOUETTES 



Idolatrous, themselves deeming divine, 
Bowing down each to the other for a sign, 
Working for Thee in evil ways that run 
Quite round the circle of Thy pure design. 
Yet swerve not from the centre; these in vain 
Seek liberty, and pull against a chain, 
They draw but nearer Thee in the rebound; 
Wings have they, yet are rooted to the ground, 
Where Thou art; though unrooted they should 

fly, 

There art Thou also: hear Thy creatures cry. 



HYMN TO THE SEA 



When I remember, going listlessly 

Through the long, loud, bright tumult of the 

street, 
The sea, 

There comes a silence into the dull air 
Thick with resounding blows 
As of a battle where vile armies meet; 
And I am suddenly aware 
As of a cleansing wind blown suddenly 
From somewhere far beyond the mild and sweet 
Half-human regions of the rose, 
A wind that has no message to repeat. 
That calls, and no man knows 
What voice is calling in the sea. 

II 

I never loved the earth, that like a mother 
Talks to her children in a voice they know, 
Drawing her children close to one another 
And whispering old tales of long ago. 
I have no human love for man, my brother, 



132 SILHOUETTES 



My dreams are not as his dreams, and I go 

A lonely way alone. 

I go alone to the uneompassionate sea ; 

I hear no private sorrow in its moan ; 

There are no tears 

In its bright, sorrowless crying, and from me 

The glittering friend I talk with never hears 

A whimpering for human sympathy. 

Ill 
Call to me, call by night. 
Let me come out into the moonless dark. 
I see a vague shape growing slowly white 
Out of the night, and, hark! 
The soft plunge of the breakers on the sand, 
And the sharp shriek 
Of the resisting pebbles, as a hand 
Clutches the land. 

And then unclasps, and, indolently weak. 
Scatters the spoils it only seems to seek. 
Call to me out of the night. 
In the irresistible, old, unknown way; 
Say nothing ; what is there to say ? 
Is there a word for delight ? 
I see the darkness moving, like a cloud 
With rims of gusty light; 
I hear an inarticulate voice crying aloud. 



HYMN TO THE SEA 133 

IV 

Unknown spirit that calls 

To the mysterious spirit housed in walls 

Of the body, and desiring liberty. 

Free spirit, promising 

Nothing but to be free. 

Call me this wandering 

And always restless guest 

That will not be at home within my breast, 

This never satisfied, 

Fluctuant, foster-brother of the tide; 

Call subtly, and release 

The secret of the waves' unresting peace. 

To set my eager spirit, if not free. 

Into some comparable activity. 

Call to me mostly when I seem 

To move through silken tangles of a dream 

Forgetting what wild seabird spirit in me 

Cries out for liberty. 

Call to me, till, returning to my mind 

In the loud city streets, busy with men, 

There come cool silence, and the night, and then. 

Borne inward to me, overflowing me. 

The breath of a salt wind 

And the voice of the sea. 



HYMN TO AIR 

I 

Because the ways of breath 
Belong not to the soul. 
Which may not even control 
How it shall come on death ; 
Therefore, beholding thus 
What secret and wise care 
Silently follows us. 
Let the soul praise the air ! 

II 

Shadow of life in me, 
August familiar, dear 
Companion ever near 
Whose form I may not see; 
I, when alone I walk 
With men walking, or trees, 
With this enchanter talk 
Of older things than these. 

Ill 

This breath that enters in 

To warm and purify 
134 



HYMIT TO AIR 135 

The source of life which I 
Deem all my own within, 
Has felt the earth reel round 
From outer space that lies 
Somewhere beneath the ground, 
Somewhere above the skies. 

IV 

This humble unseen friend 
Whom I go elbowing, — 
What if it bid take wing 
And in the spirit ascend 
Where foot hath never trod, 
Where bird hath never come. 
Where man may look on God 
And his thought find a home? 



Joy wraps me round in air. 
On mountain-heights I drink 
Eapture, until I think 
My being everywhere 
Into the universe; 
I laugh with divine mirth 
To see the pretty, fierce 
Babe-scramblings of the earth. 



136 SILHOUETTES 



VI 

Yet, day by day more sure, 
This mercy, which I praise. 
Silently all my ways 
Doth follow, and endure, 
Buffeted, to control 
The ceaseless watch of death: 
I praise thee with my soul. 
Delicate air, for breath. 



HYMN TO BEAUTY 

There is a tyrannous lord and taskmaster 
Whom men call Beauty. To be born his slave 
Is to be sleepless and a wanderer 
Always by day and night, and not to have 
The promise of much quiet in the grave. 

The colours of the world are in a plot 

To snatch my spirit from me through the 

eyes; 
They dance before me in a weedy knot 
Of woodland broideries. 
They lean to catch me from the woven skies, 
Woo me in light, and half 
Tempt with the sea's immeasurable laugh. 
Beauty is too much with me: I would live 
A free man, not a fugitive, 
Be for an interval 

The hourglass of the hours of sun and shower. 
And for one hour 
reel with the drowsy oxen in the stall 

Nothing at all. 

137 



138 SILHOUETTES 



Only, it may not be; 

For the avenging Beauty follows me, 

And whips me from my sloth 

And goads me on to some new adoration. 

I cannot walk through any city street 

Where labour hardly elbows by starvation. 

But I must meet 

The inhuman Beauty both 

In subtly wasted cheeks and in the spilth 

Of the enriching gutter's plague-green filth. 

Beauty is poured 

Out of the vats of darkness ; Beauty runs 

Through leakages of suns. 

And scatters in the splinters of the seas. 

This naked wall is high enough to hoard 

Legions of beauty in its crevices. 

Enough for the immortal soul to endure; 

And the immortal sky is not more pure. 

Nor God 

More empty of defect, than this brown clod. 

infinite 

And endless spirit of the world's disguise. 

Spirit of lies. 

Beauty, the very light 

Wherein we see, the sight 

We see by, and the thing we seem to see, 



HYMN TO BEAUTY 139 



Either give me 

Humility to be indeed content 

With that which thou hast lent. 

And grace to take it simply as my right. 

Or power not less divine 

Than thine, 

That I may make a world and call it mine. 



THE HUMAN" FACE 

To imagine God with a human face 

Is the utmost human disgrace; 

For since the Spirit of Evil trod 

Earth, none has seen the image of God. 

I speak not of Jesus, he was a child, 

God in Man, therefore was undefiled; 

For in the Virgin Mary's womb. 

He leapt, so small in so little a room; 

And, as he greatened span by span, 

Never was there a lovelier man. 

Never one more loved by a woman: 

For being human he was inhuman. 

By the Jews He was Crucified 

And still the Jews say that he died : 

But I say no ; for from evil to worse 

Evil the Jews are given for a curse 

Miserly souls and unbelief. 

Judas, who hanged himself, wa^ a Thief. 



140 



NOTTE VENEZIANO 

I slept in Venice. The bright windy day 

Merged into night, along the Zattere, 

Over the long Guidecca luminous. 

The night was bright and windy ; and 't was thus 

I fell asleep and let the moonlight fall 

Across my face, and scatter on the wall ; 

And thus I came into the moonlight spell. 

I dreamed; and in my dream a darkness fell 

Upon the land and water, and the night 

Poured like a flood across the infinite. 

Then, as I dreamed, the billowy darkness broke 

At some soft, slow, insinuating stroke. 

And lo ! a little core of light began 

To waken softly, and its rays outran. 

And, by insensible degrees, increased 

Into the semblance of a phantom East; 

And the whole night gathered and overflowed. 

Flood upon flood, until a shining road 

Of level water lay out endlessly 

Into the outer reaches of the sea. 

I floated forth lightly upon it, and 
Suddenly, round me, there was no more land, 
141 



142 SILHOUETTES 



But rioting from the depths of the sea's caves, 

The shining floor broke into hollow waves, 

And rocked the house about me, and drove me on 

Into the night of waters. Land was gone. 

The whole live Earth shrank like a startled snail 

Into the shell of heaped-up waters, pale 

As moonlight in the moonlight, and now curled 

Under and over and round about the world. 

And the waves drew me, and the treacherous night 

Into the circle of its infinite 

Would fain have sucked me, and I saw the moon 

Laughing an evil laugh, and the stars swoon 

Into an ecstasy of merriment. 

Then, knowing I was wholly lost, I sent 

A great cry shouting up into the sky. 

And leapt upright, and with an echoing cry 

Over my head I heard the waters hiss; 

And I fell slowly down the sheer abyss, 

Age after endless age of such intense 

And unimaginably sharp suspense. 

That soul and body parted at the stroke; 

And with the utter anguish I awoke. 

And saw the night grow softly into day 

Outside my windows on the Zattere. 



